Once Again Antimicrobial Fabrics

By William H Harriss. 18/09/2021?

Wearing my Red Diamond Hotel Awards hat, I am worried about pillows and bedding for hotels being treated with chemicals and heavy metals.?

Recently I had reason to publish an article called “About Pillows treated with Benzalkonium Chloride.” https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/pillows-treated-benzalkonium-chloride-william-h-harriss-fbii/

I published that because I discovered that Benzalkonium Chloride is used to make some antimicrobial fabrics in hotel bedding and pillow enclosures. I have since learned at least one Caribbean hotel group are currently using similar technology on mattresses and pillows. I am sure there will be others doing the same. But is it safe, or is it a grave health risk?

What Does “Antimicrobial” Mean?

The word “antimicrobial” means that the fabric offers protection against bacteria, mildew, mould, and many other harmful microbes that can grow in warm, moist environments. Antimicrobial products are made in a couple of different ways. One way is to spin antimicrobial fibres into a yarn, which is then woven into a fabric. This method is common with silver threads. Another way to create an antimicrobial fabric is to add a topical chemical solution to the dye or finishing process, such as Silane.

Are Antimicrobial Products Safe?

Now we get to one of the most critical questions: Are antimicrobial products safe? The answer is complex. I am unsure they should be considered safe in bedding.

The FDA’s regulations. Antimicrobial products are heavily regulated, and for a good reason; They are considered a pesticide within the US. This means all antimicrobial treatments should undergo testing to ensure they are non-toxic to consumers and the environment while meeting FDA requirements. But laboratory testing cannot always be applied to real life, for instance, in a hotel bedroom.

Regardless of claims by fabric manufacturers and bedding sales companies, there is no evidence that antimicrobials will kill the COVID-19 virus. However, it is well known that antimicrobials can be effective in their mission to destroy bacteria and microbes. Even so, with the lack of distinction between good and bad bacteria, the environmental risk for man, beast, and fish seems too high for comfort. Is it an unnecessary risk when all you need is to wash your bedding more frequently with a good quality detergent and hot water? If your product allows, throw in a cap of diluted bleach with each wash for peace of mind. In the case of pillows, we know they cannot currently be sterilized internally by any known method other than ozone gas.

I am writing because I discovered that one Caribbean hotel group uses mattress covers and pillow enclosures treated with antimicrobial chemicals and heavy metals.

In the eyes of science, chemicals and metals can be extremely dangerous, and one must question if they pose a grave danger to the hotel clients.

Silver is used which is introduced as nanoparticles. Friendly for jewellery, but not so lovely if induced into the human body.

Multiple studies have reported that nanosilver leaches out of textiles. Research also reveals that nanosilver may be toxic to humans and aquatic and marine organisms. Although it is widely used, little is understood about its fate or long-term harmful effects on the environment.

Nano-silver, also identified as colloidal silver, has been known and used for ages to combat diseases or prolong food freshness. It usually occurs in the form of a suspension consisting of particles of size < 100 nm. Due to their specific properties, silver nanoparticles are used in many technologies to produce medical devices, textiles, conductive materials, or photovoltaic cells. For example, they are now introduced into fabrics for hotel bedding to destroy bacteria and viruses.

There can be a grave danger to humans if nanosilver particles enter the human body. Potential exposure routes for silver nanoparticles are through dermal, oral and inhalation pathways. Silver nanoparticles may be absorbed through the lungs, intestine, and through the skin into circulation and thus may reach such organs as the liver, kidney, spleen, brain, heart, and testes.

Nano-silver may cause mild eyes and skin irritations. It can also act as a mild skin allergen. Inhalation of silver nanoparticles affects the lungs and liver. It has been demonstrated that silver nanoparticles may be genotoxic to mammalian cells. There are alarming reports on the adverse effects of silver nanoparticles on the reproduction of experimental animals. Exposure to silver nanoparticles may cause a route to senility exerting a neurotoxic influence, affecting cognitive functions, and causing the impairment of short-term and working memory. The maximum permissible concentration (MAC) for the inhalable fraction of silver is almost nothing, at 0.05 mg/m3, which is currently binding in Europe. Considering toxicological studies of silver nanoparticles, it seems reasonable to be worried about using treated fabrics on such things as pillows where people directly breathe into and out of on a close-up basis.?

Nanosilver impregnated into consumer products and coatings will slowly, through laundering, be abraded from its substrate material at varying volumes and over varying periods, depending on concentrations in the material and the strength with which it is bonded, says Prof. Dr Bernd Nowack of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. He notes that the industry standard is for the antimicrobial effect to persist over at least fifty washes in consumer textiles. However, research suggests nanosilver can leach from certain products within the first few washes. [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bernd-Nowack]?

Critics have questioned whether it is wise to dispatch such a powerful weapon against bacteria in everyday contexts where bacteria pose some concern. “It’s one thing if we’re using a little bit of nanosilver in the shoes of diabetics,” says Jaydee Hanson, policy director for the non-profit International Center for Technology Assessment. “It’s another thing if you’re putting it in all underwear, all socks, every bed, every bed sheet [pillow and mattress enclosures]. It’s a huge, exponential increase in the amount of nanosilver we’re putting into the environment.” [into our bodies] [The International Center for Technology Assessment is a US non-profit bi-partisan organization based in Washington, DC.]

Gregory Crocetti, a Melbourne-based microbiologist who has worked on Friends of the Earth Australia’s nanosilver campaign, takes a stricter position. “Nanosilver should remain in a hospital setting only,” he says. “Those clinical uses will be diminished by completely hysterical and frivolous uses in homes [and hotels]. ... Nanosilver has a high likelihood of promoting not just silver resistance but also antibiotic resistance because of the process of co-selection.” Co-selection occurred when bacteria challenged with one antimicrobial find a resistance gene by swapping DNA with bacteria resistant to a different antimicrobial.[https://uq.academia.edu/GregoryCrocetti/CurriculumVitae]?

Health campaigners in Australia are calling for strict safety checks on the use of nano-sized silver in everyday products, following similar health concerns in the United States over the use of antimicrobial agents.?

Last month following court battles with food safety advocates, the US Environmental Protection Agency agreed to regulate the use of nanosilver in new products.

Unlike other silver-based technologies, nanotechnology is controversial because of the use of small particles. Nanomaterials are typically less than 100 nanometres or 100,000 times less than the width of a human hair.

According to the European Commission, research shows that nanosilver could promote resistance to antibiotics, be toxic to mammalian liver, stem, and brain cells, and harm the environment.

Friends of the Earth campaigner Jeremy Tager has urged Australian authorities to follow the US lead pointing to the rapidly growing number of food and supermarket products with the controversial nanomaterial. [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jeremy-Tager]

In my view, what makes it worse is the pillow and mattress enclosure manufacturers are using an antimicrobial treatment that contains other things besides silver. They primarily include nanoparticles of Silver, Zinc, and the chemical Silane. In most cases, all are used in or on hotel bedding products at the same time.

Zinc, the concern with these super-small nanoparticles is that they can find their way into your body by penetrating your skin and getting into your bloodstream. A study using rats did show that their lungs became inflamed when they inhaled ZnO nanoparticles for a more extended period (five days). So, Zinc Oxide can affect you when breathed. * Exposure to Zinc Oxide can cause “metal fume fever.” This is a flu-like illness with symptoms of metallic taste in the mouth, headache, fever and chills, aches, chest tightness and cough. In addition, Zinc Oxide is a known photocatalyst, meaning that the substance can form free radicals as soon as they meet sunlight. And those free radicals can damage your cells and DNA.

The number of hotel products containing nanoparticles (NPs), or nanofibers has grown considerably. The increasing use of nanomaterials (NMs) in consumer products has raised concerns about their potential risks for hotel guests, workers, consumers, and the environment. As a result, understanding the effects of NPs in exposed subjects is becoming a public and occupational health priority. According to some authors, by 2020, the number of handlers and workers involved in handling the nanotechnology technology items such as hotel bedding worldwide will be approximately six million.

Extrapolating animal test data to humans by estimating an equivalent dose is necessary to lower the risk levels. This deficiency in information regarding NP toxicity can affect risk assessment and the formulation of NPs regulations. While there are doubts and uncertainties, legislation will not be able to support the sustainable development of nanotechnologies, and the entire productive sector risks being blocked. Competent authorities are applying the principle of “no data, no market” could prevent the use and sale of materials presumed to be dangerous. There is no toxicological and ecological information?

There are many forms of Silane, all of which can be dangerous to humans.

The chemical Silane in the raw is a colourless gas with a repulsive odour. The immediate health hazard of that is that it may cause thermal burns. It is flammable and pyrophoric (auto-igniting in the air) but may form mixtures with air that does not auto-ignite but are flammable or explosive. In addition, Silane may react violently in contact with ozone gas and other oxidants. ?

The type of Selane being used in the fabric industry is called Quat-Silane. The Effects of Quat-Silane Antimicrobials on the Physical and Mechanical Properties of Cotton and Cotton/Elastane Fabrics used for clothing must be questionable because we know so little about its overall effect when applied to bedding, in particular pillows. This is because pillows are breathed into and out of direct and close.

Antimicrobial tests showed that all such treated fabric samples have good antimicrobial activity. But how about pathogens passing by or passing through the fabric? We know that this treated fabric will ensure pathogens cannot live on them or in them. But passing by or through them, pathogens are unaffected. For example, the COVID virus is 1,000 times smaller than the width of a hair from your head. The Zika virus and the T4 Bacteriophage—responsible for E. coli—are just a fraction of the size of the COVID virus.

The antimicrobial can only affect pathogens that land on or are deposited on such fabrics and stay there long enough to be affected. If pathogens, viruses, and bacteria pass instantly through the woven fabric, they can pass unharmed into a pillow or mattress. Such pathogens dwell inside the pillow until someone puts their head on the pillow, and the pump-action [the weight of the head] expels the air in the pillow along with all those active pathogens. A cloud of pathogens surrounds the guest’s head. Then, when you take your head off the pillow, they pass back through the woven fabric at such a rate that they remain unaffected by the antimicrobial chemicals and compounds contained in and on the fabrics. Woven or porous fabrics are not a filter; they will not stop pathogens from entering a pillow. If the pillow can breathe through the fabric, unharmed pathogens can pass in and out of the pillow.

I must ask if there is a severe risk to the hotel guest whose head is on the pillow? Because I can see no way that some leaching of those chemicals and compounds can be excluded and may damage the person breathing them. I do not believe this system should be used on bedding, particularly pillows. The dangers are too great. Is the hotel guest at an extended risk from chemical inhalation, heavy nano metal inhalation, and yet still subjected to hundreds of different unaffected pathogens, viruses, and bacteria?

Despite the preceding, if hotels wash any of their antimicrobial fabrics in bleach or detergents, the antimicrobial treatment may be destroyed instantly. In the case of Silane, using bleach or any other oxidant may cause a severe chemical reaction. Therefore, only mild soap and cool or warm water should be used on antimicrobial treated fabrics. Each time these fabrics are washed, the antimicrobial gets weaker. Eventually, it will be washed out in about fifty washes or sooner.